"He's dead, Mathew. We can do nothing. Maggie, poor child ..."
He approached for an instant more nearly than he had ever done. He took her hand. There were tears in his eyes.
"It's good of you, Anne—to take her."
She withdrew her hand—very gently.
"I wish we'd taken her before. She must have had a terrible time here. I'd never realised ..."
He stood away from her near the window, feeling suddenly ashamed of his impetuosity.
"She's a strange girl," Anne Cardinal went on. "She didn't seem to feel this,—or anything. She hasn't, I think, much heart. I'm afraid she may find it a little difficult with us—"
Mathew was uncomfortable now. His mood had changed; he was sullen. His sister always made him feel like a disgraced dog. He shuffled on his feet.
"She's a good girl," he muttered at last, and then with a confused look about him, as though he were searching for something, he stumbled out of the room.
Meanwhile Maggie went on her way. She chose instinctively her path, through the kitchen garden at the back of the village, down the hill by the village street, over the little bridge that crossed the rocky stream of the Dreot, and up the steep hill that led on to the outskirts of Rothin Moor. The day, although she had no eyes for it, was one of those sudden impulses of misty warmth that surprise the Glebeshire frosts. The long stretch of the moor was enwrapped by a thin silver network of haze; the warmth of the sun, seen so dimly that it was like a shadow reflected in a mirror, struck to the very heart of the soil. Where but yesterday there had been iron frost there was now soft yielding earth; it was as though the heat of the central fires of the world pressed dimly upward through many miles of heavy weighted resistance, straining to the light and air. Larks, lost in golden mist, circled in space; Maggie could feel upon her face and neck and hands the warm moisture; the soil under her feet, now hard, now soft, seemed to tremble with some happy anticipation; the moor, wrapped in its misty colour, had no bounds; the world was limitless space with hidden streams, hidden suns.